


Something About You

by skywalkerluke



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy Hargrove Redemption, F/M, Family Fluff, Fix-It, Gay Male Character, Gen, Good Babysitter Steve Harrington, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, billy and steve are sweet boys, domestic abuse, i guess, it's until mid season 02, max and billy relationship, mentions of domestic abuse, the party is a family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-09-19 04:56:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20325445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skywalkerluke/pseuds/skywalkerluke
Summary: Billy was hurt. He was always hurt, both inside and outside. Max had always been a ray of sunshine in his sad, sad life, trying to make him be a "good big bro".Now he knows that it's not only him that is hurt. The whole fabric of the universe has been hurt, and there are demodogs and mindflayers, and Steve fucking Harrington looking at him with his big doe eyes.or the story about how Billy and Max are a good family, and Steve and The Party become part of it.





	1. Chapter 1 - 1984: The Night with all the Demodogs

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Yourself or Someone Like You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12864858) by [halfempty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfempty/pseuds/halfempty). 

Billy thundered down the Byers porch, punching the door a few times.

Steve _ fucking _Harrington opened the door, looking like a scared rabbit, hair a mess and eyes wild, like he was looking at a threat.

Billy almost growled at the scene, his hands squeezing into fists, aching to let go of some of the violence that swirled inside of him.

“Gimme my fucking sister!”, Billy howlered at Steve, trying to go past him.

“Woa, man, she ain’t here”, Steve managed to lie, praying that Max wouldn’t show up at the window with all the other little pests that were inside the house, and that the demodog was actually dead and not just playing them.

“Yo, she left me a note, I know she’s here, dumbass”, Billy said, and Steve wouldn’t fucking budge from the doorframe. Pretty boy had finally learned how to plant his feet. “Damn good time to actually do that”, Billy thought.

Steve was saying some dumbass bullshit about how there wasn’t anyone there, and he was just housesitting for Mrs. Byers, when there was a loud shriek coming from inside the house, the sound of an animal or something actually fucking dying.

Billy finally managed to push down past Steve, punching him in his pretty, pretty face and sending him sprawling on the floor, while wildly looking for Maxine.

Fucking Maxine, always getting him in trouble. His throath hurt from where his dad had squeezed him, and his shoulder ached from hitting the wall, and now his hand fucking hurt from punching King Steve. So much for becoming friends with the King of Hawkis after this shitshow.

“MAXINE? Where the fuck are you?”, Billy yelled, “C’mon sis, don’t give me more trouble”, Billy said, walking into the living room, and completely ignoring Steve being a sputtering mess behind him, trying to get him to stop, blood running from a small cut above his eye where Billy’s ring had probably caught him.

“Maaxie, where are you? I need to take you home before the old man comes killing us”, Billy tried again, trying to take the sneer out of his voice when he talked about his father. Fucking King Steve didn’t need to know all about his fucked up home life, even if Maxine had probably babbled it all to him already. She never could keep her damn mouth shut, and that was what had put them in this damn city, in the middle of nowhere.

Even though Max’s mother was a dumb bitch by deciding to marry his father, Max had been a tiny little thing when they first got married, about 5 or 6, trusted at him to care of, and he couldn’t help but be fond of her. That was what hurt the most when she squealed all his secrets to her mom, who said it all to his dad, and what sent him to the hospital before coming to goddamn Indiana.

Max came running to him, probably feeling in his voice that he wouldn’t be yelling at her for running out on him (she was only partialy correct, but he would never let her know that, not after what happened between them), and jumped at his neck.

For a moment, he couldn’t tell if she was trying to kill him by choking him or if she was actually hugging him (it had been almost a year since she had hugged him, before all the shitshow happened in California). He tugged at her, trying to get a look at her face, but she had put her head on the crook of his neck, and was holding on for dear life, a baby coala clinging to him with bony knees and elbows.

That was when he saw the fucking demodog. At the time, he still didn’t know it was called that, but he saw the black, slimy thing lying in the middle of the Byers’ living room, with three of the fucking kids that hung around Maxine looking at it with mixed feeling on their faces, a fucking bat filled with nails on Sinclair’s hand.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE? HARRINGTON, WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING DOING WITH THESE KIDS? AND THIS THING?” Billy yelled, completely freaking out, holding Max against him even if she was too old to this, and he was still angry at her.

“Yo, don’t freak out on me, Hargrove, c’mon, I’m fucking hurting all over” Steve said, his voice almost whiny, while he tried to stop the cut on his eyebrown from bleeding.

“WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING HERE? YOU’LL JUST SLOW US DOWN! WE NEED TO BURN THEM!” Wheeler yelled, his face red with fury, little fists pressed against his side.

“WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO BURN? ARE YOU CRAZY? YOU’RE ALL CRAZY”, Billy freaked out even more, turning around to try and see all of the little freaks at once.

Steve sat heavily on a broken down couch, throwing a blanket on the fucking thing on the floor and taking it out of view. His brow was still bleeding a little, and his eye was starting to swell, the side of his face bruising. “Mike, stop freaking them out. C’mon, I’ll let you guys talk me into doing something crazy, let’s just explain what’s happening to Hargrove so he will stop freaking out”, Steve said, kind of tiredly.

“WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS, WE NEED TO BURN THE MINDFLAYER AND HELP WILL!”, Henderson yelled at them, and Max finally looked up from her spot at Billy’s neck. “We should tell my brother everything, he’ll help us”, she said to Henderson, her usual fire coming back, and Billy put her on the floor again, even though she still clung to his side.

Steve and Lucas and Dustin all talked for a few minutes, crazily and all over each other, spinning him a tale that could come out of a Stephen King novel. They had these dark shade on their eyes, and for that reason, Billy believed every word that they said, even if it seemed crazy. He had seen the fucking demodog after all, a crazy baby chick that could move a van with her mind didn’t seem that much crazy after seeing that thing.

“Okay”, Billy said, “So you were just going to go down a tunnel and burn the thing while you were still on it? And the tunnel is actually THE thing?”

“Yeah, that was their plan” Steve answered him, and both Lucas and Dustin gave him the stinky eye.

“Yeah, we’re improving this shit, but we can do it while we fucking go to where this shit is” Billy said, his words all jumbled up and his mind already lost in how to make the perfect long range igniter with the things inside the box the children had show him.

“Told you he was gonna help”, Max looked triumphant at Sinclair and Henderson, her little hand still cluthing at the fabric of Billy’s shirt. They looked at her with an odd face, as if they couldn’t believe she had such faith at him. Maybe Max hadn’t squealed all their business to town after all.

Hawkins only saw of him what he wanted them to see. They saw Billy Hargrove, the bad boy that wore a leather jacket, the problem child with a temper and a loud and fast car. The boy that yelled at his sister in the parking lot, and went around fucking with too many good Hawkins girls. If only they knew.

They went down to Billy’s car, putting the materials to burn the damn Mindflayer, or whatever, on the trunk and pilling in the too small car.

The engine roared, and they pratically flew down to the pumpkin patch, Harrington yelling instructions at his ear, the children squealing in the backseat, telling him to go faster, that they were losing time, that Will would die. Billy tried to remember who Will was, he was almost sure it was the little kid with the Beatles haircut, but thought it was best not to ask and get yelled at even more.

They got off from the car, and Billy started rolling a good and long igniter, so they could start the fire from after they had gotten off from the damn creature.

Steve made all the kids put on masks made of bandanas on their faces, looking like a stern den dad at them, helping them with it. He shoved one at Billy’s, shrugging and saying that the air was toxic. Fucking great.

They spread gasoline all over the tunnels, Billy probably having more fun with it than he should, but with his little mask on, no one could actually see him grinning like a loon. Lucas Sinclair seemed to be having the time of his life as well, throwing gasoline at the sides of the tunnel with some kind of hidden violence. Billy tried not to think too much about it.

As they went up in the tunnels, they found what seemed to be a hub of demodogs, a scene out of a horror movie, complete with old broken bones and a misty quality to the tunnel walls, that almost seemed to come out. They spread gasoline there too, and Billy took the last gallon of gasoline to spread behind them while they came back to their point of entrance, just to make sure there would be something to burn the whole way after they put the damn thing on fire.

They could see their rope and the way out when they started hearing the sound of paws on the ground, feeling the earth shake. Demodogs were coming, probably to eat them alive, Billy thought. What a way to go.

Billy and Steve shoved the kids up the rope, grunting and pushing at them until they had gone all the way up, but Billy was still on the ground, and Steve only halfway up the rope when the hoard of demodogs came upon them. Billy could see his life flash behind his eyes, as he was shoved down by a demodog, and he saw all the anger, his mother dying, his father beating him up. Max, his tiny little sister, all fire and huge smiles, red hair so simillar to his mom’s, Steve looking at him with his big doe eyes as he taunted him at basketball. Steve. Steve.

Steve who has half on the rope, and half off, pulling at his hand while the demodogs continued to run past them. Billy managed to get on his feet, and grunted as he climbed on the rope, the hole that they had gone down starting to close.

“GIMME THE LIGHTER”, Billy yelled, and Sinclair threw the lighter at him, and he ignited the clothe and rope put together, and they could see the flames going up high agains the walls of the tunnel from the little space that still wasn’t closed, and all of them could swear that they had heard a great shriek as the fucking Mindflayer was flayed. 

They all collapsed agains the side of Billy’s car, and Billy just couldn’t muster the energy to yell at them and tell them not to scratch his freaking car.

“Think we killed the Mindflayer?”, Henderson asked, after a few minutes of gasping for air.

“Think we almost got killed by the Mindflayer”, Steve answered him, starting to get up and get the kids set up on the car. “You ok?”, he asked Billy, who was still sprawled on the floor.

“Think so”, answered Billy, and Steve smiled a blinding smile at him.

Billy was fucked. But he smiled back at that pretty boy.


	2. Chapter 2 - 1984: Max's Big Bro

_A few weeks after the Night of the Demodogs, early November _

After _that _night, Steve and Billy hung out with all the kids a lot of days.

Billy finally met Eleven (“My name is El”), and he couldn’t believe that tiny and delicate little girl could do what they had told him, until she raised her eyebrows at him and slowly started levitating the Camaro, what made Billy shriek (in a manly way, he told Steve after the other boy stopped laughing at him).

One evening, Max slammed into Billy’s room, almost making him fall from his bed from shock.

“MAXINE, what the fuckin’ hell?”, Billy screamed at her, throwing a pillow at her face. She yelped, shrieking away about how he had probably used that pillow to get off. Billy laughed his ass off, not telling her that he had washed his sheets a few days ago. Anyway, it wasn’t like that anymore.

Back in California, Billy was always hanging around with some girl on his arm, and they usually didn’t last more than a week. It couldn’t last more than a week, or they’d notice something fundamentaly different about him.

Billy couldn’t bare to call himself _wrong_anymore. Not when that was what his father tought, and everybody goddamn knew that Billy lived to make his father wrong.

He used the bad boy vibe that his father hated to keep everyone just an arm away from him, never too close to find out all of his secrets and out them to the world. But after that dreadful night filled with those nightmare monsters, there were a few people in the goddamn town of Hawkins that he could’t keep off anymore. One of them was his little sister, that he didn’t want to keep at bay anymore. The other was Steve Harrington, and Billy wanted to pull him closer and shove him away all at once.

Max shoved at Billy, making him roll to the edge of the bed, squished between her and the wall.

“Weren’t you the one grossed out by my bodily fluids”, Billy asked her, laughing at her face when he said it.

“I know you washed the sheets, I just wasn’t sure about your pillow”, Max quietly said, curling up against him like she was a little child again. Maybe she had never stopped being his little child, even though she had squealed to his mom about seeing him kiss a boy. Well, he had been kissed, but she didn’t know that.

“What’s up, shithead?”, Billy asked her, twirling a strand of his red hair in his hand, asking himself about what would happen to him if his old man saw Max laying on his bed, what would Max mom’s say. She’d probably scream about how he was currupting his little girl, like Billy hadn’t been father, mother, caregiver, judge and executioner for Max for years now.

“How do you know you like someone?”, she was all shy, little cheeks heating up with shame. She had never been that kind of girly girl, but now she was old enough to finally notice handsome boys, and for them to notice her back.

“Yo, Maxine, I’m probably not the best person to talk about this. Have you asked your mom?”, Billy cringed at the hurt look on her face, and remembered that he had never told her that he had forgiven that shitshow of squealed secrets.

“I’M SORRY, BILLY”, Maxine wailed, “PLEASE FORGIVE ME, I NEED MY BIG BRO BACK, I’M SO SORRY”

She was wailing right at his ear, and he scrambled to sit up, what only mad her wail even louder, like the volume of her crying would make him forgive her quicker. 

“MAXINE, MAXINE, WOW, stop fucking wailing at my ear”, Billy said, manhandiling her to a sitting position and pulling her against his chest.

“You forgive me?”, she sniffled, pressing her face against his chest.

“I’ve already forgiven you, dummy. You’re my baby sister. Even if you have a big mouth on you.” Billy carded his hand through her hair, trying not to make a face at her leaving snot all over his t-shirt.

“I’m sorry for saying it to my mom. I was just confused, and you were never home”, Max said softly against his chest, snuffling like a puppy at him.

“My dad was being even more than a prick that he already is, and... I was just discovering things, Maxie. That time you saw me kiss a boy, was the first time I ever kissed one. And I wasn’t even DOING the kissing, I was being kissed. I didn’t know what was happening.”, Billy let it all out on a rush, rubbing her back, and just hoping that she wouldn’t pull back from him.

“Do you like boys?”, Max asked in a rushed whisper

“Yeah, Max. I do like boys.” Billy answered her, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I think I like one boy”, Max told him, squealing when he turned his fingers against her ribs, making her squirm out of his grip and faceplant into the crook of his arm.

“Billy, you smell”, Max said like the little shit she was, and he growled at her, making her laugh and run away from him.

\-------------------------------------------------- 

Steve saw Billy park his car in front of the High School, and slowly made his way towards him. He had tried to talk to the younger boy a few other times after _the_night, but the other had brushed him off, not very willing to talk to him, but not antagonizing him anymore.

If Steve was completely honest, he missed the attention, the fire in Billy’s eyes when he taunted him. Billy had been a constant this year, and now he was just off.

“Hey man”, he smiled at Billy, walking next to him to enter the school

“Yo, man, something happen?”, Billy asked him, smiling back for a split second before scowling down at his feet.

“No, just wanted to know if you and Max wanted to come over today, I’m having a little slumber party with the kids. The Sheriff asked me to babysit El, and I saw the chance.” Steve said, leaning back against the row of lockers

“I’ll probably take Max, but I don’t know if my old man will let me stay. I’ll try” Billy answered, opening his locker and taking off his Literature book.

“Try man, I have good beer and we’ll have pizza. El wants to know you better” Steve smiled at him, and slipped him a note with his phone number and home address.

Billy looked at it, and saw that Steve had signed it with a little flair, and couldn’t help but chuckle to himself. That boy would be the death of him, he could feel his stupid crush coming to surface, and he didn’t have it in himself to throw it down.

God help him, his father could never even wonder about this, or Steve’s pretty pretty face would be ruined forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiii! Sorry for the delay in updating! My life got crazy just after I posted the first chapter, but I think everything will workout now :) 
> 
> Hope that you enjoy it. 
> 
> xx   
Ana

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya guys! 
> 
> It’s my first Stranger Things fanfic, and I hope you guys will enjoy it! 
> 
> Updated every Tuesday.


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